


In A World Full of Battles (There Is You)

by sinisterkid92



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Smut, it's rated explicit for a reason
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-05 05:12:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10298282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinisterkid92/pseuds/sinisterkid92
Summary: In the events following the season finale, Lucy flees her family and the new reality she has been faced with. Unwilling to align herself with the beliefs of her family and accept her legacy she hides in a place that had a meaning to her in her first life. With the help of Wyatt and Rufus who break Flynn out of jail, she and Flynn spend a weekend alone together. Together they attempt to heal from the events of the finale and learn to forgive, and to figure out how to go forward from there.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was the fic I was longing to write after the finale, but couldn't quite get down on paper. I hope you enjoy this, because I really enjoyed writing it. 
> 
> If you want to follow me on tumblr I'm deckerprestonsmoak over there!

It takes a lot longer than she thought it would to get from her house to the lake she would go to with her father when she was a kid. Everything seemed longer as a kid. Car trips that now could pass as a commute to work would seem like they took all day. That was why she thought it wouldn’t take as long, because time was different for children. Long was rarely long.

In this time there had never been a house at the lake that had been passed down from generation to generation on her father’s side. At least not for her to experience. No one but her knew of the memories where she sat at the dock her grandfather had built himself trying their luck at fish. They mostly just caught little fish that they’d throw back into the lake again. Even now, with everything changed that made her mother live, her father was still dead. Her real father. The one who raised her.

The one who called her little star and kissed her on the forehead good night. Not the one entrenched in Rittenhouse.

How could this be?

When Amy was born she’d been so jealous, so scared that her father wouldn’t love her like he did before. But then one Friday he picked her up from school with their bags packed in the backseat, and he took her here. 

The lake was darker at night than it was that day twenty-seven years ago. It was barely early spring and the chill in the air pressed in under her coat, nothing like the hot sun burning on her skin. She could still remember him, his warmth pressed against her side and his arm was heavy around her shoulder as he told her she would always be his little girl.

It wasn’t true, not anymore. All she had were memories of a time only she could remember. 

It was lonely.

It was scary.

She felt the burden of it like a vice grip on her heart clenching tighter and tighter. The memories of Amy and her father were on her to remember, to keep close to her heart. They weren’t dead. Not Amy at least. Just 26 years old and life over. Dead was different than gone. Gone was just gone. Erased and no one to lean on, to sit at the breakfast table and share stories with tears streaming down their faces as they laughed. She used to sit like that with Amy after their father died. Suddenly overcome with the longing to just _call_ him and tell him something, ask him something, and remembering it was not possible they’d sit together and share all the stories of their father that they could pull from their minds. 

Amy and her father had been here together in another life. 

Now the summer house was abandoned. After her father had died his wife and children in this time had sold it to a company who had wanted to turn this place into a resort of sort for people from the Silicon Valley. That business venture had failed because of bad timing. The economy had crashed just as they decided to start the renovations that would turn it from any summer house by the lake into a luxurious resort. 

That meant that no one was up here now. It was dead silent, so as soon as the car came within hearing distance she was alerted to its presence. 

He looked like a contained feral cat in the backseat of the car, and from the look of exhaustion on Wyatt and Rufus’ faces, she could tell he’d been a pain in the ass. He did have a reason to be, but still, it annoyed her. They were all just doing what they thought was the best. None of them would leave this as saints. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said as he caught sight of her. His lips curled back in what almost looked like a growl. Feral cat was definitely an apt description. She placed a heavy hand on the roof of the car, glancing in through the open door at him. Feral or not, he did not move from his seat. There had been a concern he would attack her, and from the way Wyatt’s hand kept close to his side she understood that threat had not fully been dealt with yet. 

“We got you out, what more do we have to do to convince you we’re on the same side?” Wyatt asked him, slamming the driver’s door shut with a force that didn’t even put a dent in the frustration that had built up during the hours-long ride. 

“As I’ve told you, I was perfectly fine where I was.” He glared at all three of them, giving each a few seconds each to suffer under the knives his eyes were throwing. But they seemed to have been dulled by the car ride because Wyatt and Rufus just gave Lucy an exasperated glance before Rufus turned on his heels to get up towards the house.

“I’ll see if I can get the electricity going,” Rufus mumbled, waving his hand in the general direction he set off towards and quickly put a distance between himself and the car. 

“Get out,” Wyatt said as he took a hold of Flynn’s door, waving his hand as he would to a petulant child that wouldn’t follow direction. _This way_ , it said. _Now_. In another scenario, it could have been funny. It wasn’t. 

He got out eventually, his limping giving a clue of the ordeal he’d been through the past days before they were able to get him out. So much had happened in the days since he had been arrested, everything had changed within 24hrs turning it all on its head. 

Her mother was Rittenhouse too, and she had been grooming Lucy her whole life to join. Lucy’s adventurous spirit had stopped them before, curbing it was necessary before locking her into it all. That was why she was chosen by them to do these trips. They wanted to give her the adventure they believed she needed to calm her restless soul. What they hadn’t counted on was the team she had traveled with, and the compelling and authentic story of Garcia Flynn. What they hadn’t factored into the equation was that she was more than just her legacy. She was also human, and she felt it all so deeply that there was no way for her to align herself with an organization that intentionally inflicted grievous harm. 

Before Lucy and Flynn had been separated days ago they had reached an amicable truce of sorts, and understanding of the motivations behind their respective actions and ideologies. With his arrest, and her unwilling and unknowing role in it, it all had disappeared. The respect he had for her, however warped ways it had been shown in the past, could now be gone. She saw no reason why he would still hold her high in regard still. What that meant for her, and their future alliance, she had no clue about. All she knew was that she had to convince him to join them. They needed a man with his conviction even if they hated the means which he carried it all out in. They needed a man with his background in intelligence when they no longer had the US government behind them anymore. 

It was the first time she’d been inside the house since her father had died years ago. Even with the furniture gone save for a few working benches that the construction firm had left there, and one wall that had only been halfway blown out, it still looked like she remembered it. Some had summer house cabins that barely fit their families, with bunk beds and out houses. This was a proper house, a place they could live all year round if they had wanted to. Her dad had planned to move up here when they retired, spending his retirement fishing and hunting until he got too old for it. Those plans went up in smoke when he had a heart attack when he was just fifty years old. 

Not even the Hindenburg, or marrying another woman, changed that. He had even died on the same day. 

She hadn’t dared to ask if he too had been Rittenhouse. She wasn’t sure she would be able to take the answer to that question. 

In the back room, there was still furniture left that she recognized from when she visited this place with her dad. The couch that used to be in the large living room at the front of the house was pushed against a wall with the once elegant and grand table. Now they were covered in a thick layer of dust but had seemed to have survived the years of maltreatment.

Her finger traced the top of the table, revealing a sliver of the dark wood underneath the dust of white and gray. She heard the steps behind her, heavy boots against the creaky wooden floor. 

“So this is your father’s old house?” He stopped somewhere behind her, she could imagine him leaning against the doorframe, cocky as always. Then she remembered the look on his face when she saw it through the car window earlier. Angry, sad, and wild. Apparently, he’d calmed down a little in the minutes since. 

She turned around to face him. “Not Cahill,” she said. He was standing there with his hands shoved deep in his pockets, watching her with distrust but not hostility. “My _real_ father, the one who raised me… this was his family summer house.” She chuckled at the thought. “Figured we could use this whole situation to our advantage. Only Jiya knows my father’s name.” At least, that’s what she thought. This place was as good as any place now. As safe as anywhere. 

“‘Tis nice.” 

“Mhmm,” she agreed. “I don’t think there’s any beds left here… but Wyatt said he brought us cots.” 

“Great.” She shrugged her shoulders. She already missed her own bed in that apartment she had before all of this time traveling. She had saved for it, picked it out after going store to store to get the best deal on the best mattress. The mattress in her mother’s house now just wasn’t the same. And the one with Noah… He was Rittenhouse too. Was there any part of her life not ensnared in it all? 

\---

They sat the beds up in the room with the furniture left in it once Wyatt and Rufus had left. They got a fire going in the fireplace, and then they sat in silence. The night stretched on outside, and outside the window she could see the almost full moon illuminating the clouds, the clouds and light mimicking waves of the ocean. 

Rufus had gotten the generators working, but there was still no heat in the house. They could boil water, heat up food, turn on a few lights. But they could not get any heat in the house. Luckily it was spring, and it didn’t get more than cool in the nights. After they had set them up in the house Wyatt and Rufus had left. To keep up appearances, to keep Rittenhouse off their trail. 

For a long time, they just sat there on their beds in silence, neither saying anything. Hours passed between them as they looked everywhere but at each other. Eventually, Flynn lay down on the bed, his hands clasped over his chest. 

“I know why I’m here,” he said, furrowing his eyebrows at the question he had not found an answer to yet. “But why are _you_ here? I didn’t expect Rittenhouse to turn on their own that easily.” There was almost something gleeful in his voice as if he found humor in her self-imposed exile. 

“Did you know my mother was Rittenhouse too?” she asked, leaning back against the wall, watching him closely for a reaction. There was not a single twitch of muscle in his entire face or body. “Yeah, didn’t think so either. The version of me who wrote that diary either didn’t know, or didn’t want you to know, and I’m really hoping it’s the former. But there is so much you don’t know Flynn.” 

For a moment he just stared at the ceiling, saying nothing. Then abruptly a hollow and humorless laugh bubbled out of him, shaking his body on the rickety bed. 

“Of course,” he said. “You are… Makes sense actually.” 

“That’s why I ran.” She sighed. “They started uhm, talking to me about everything and… the things they wanted me to do, to be, to say… I couldn’t do it, and if I don’t do it then I couldn’t stay with them.” She pulled her legs up, hugging them to her chest, trying to become as small as possible. “Marry Noah, help with research and time travel to make small adjustments to history in their favor, to make them stronger. They’ve groomed me my entire life, steered me in the direction they needed me to go. They thought that framing you as a terrorist, your actions, would make me sympathetic to their cause… but they didn’t know, couldn’t know everything that happened in the past, and the things I learned about them and their organization. They thought it would be easy to convince me. That I would accept it all… for an organization as old as that you’d think they were smarter than that.”

She paused, looking at him wide-eyed and drifting at sea. 

“They had my entire life planned for me. When to marry, when to have children, what my children were going to do…. Two children by the way. First one in two years, second one two years after that. Apparently time is of the essence for me, I’m _old_.” She snorted. “If my sister taught me one thing, and if I can honor the memory of her in any way… it’s by standing up to my mom and finally living my life my way. Not bending over for her anymore.”

She looked over at him, knowing that at least he shared the distaste she had of Rittenhouse. Understood why she was willing to abandon her family to get away from that organization. Wyatt and Rufus understood, yes. Rufus even more so with the threat that Rittenhouse had posed to his family. Yet it felt different with Flynn. Maybe it was because how badly she needed to convince him that she had to feel more connected. The connection had been there a while, though, long before she could even say they were fighting on the same front. Even though she hated to admit it there had been an intrigue that hadn’t been purely innocent since Abraham Lincoln. Hating him was easy, but it grew from that and slowly developed into attraction. He was good looking. Too good looking for her comfort. It had been much easier if he’d been ugly, or sleazy. Anything but what he actually was. It became worse when his motives were from protecting his wife and child -- who couldn’t find some way of empathizing with that?

“They said I was almost… Royalty.” She shuddered at the thought. “The thought of that… it freaks me out, it scares me and it disgusts me all at the same time.”

“So you’re like a Rittenhouse princess?” He raised his eyebrows, not hostile anymore but his voice still had an edge to it that would probably take a long, long time to soften. If she ever managed to do so. 

“It’s creepy.” She matched his flat tone.

\---

He found her outside in the morning chopping wood. Wearing jeans and a tank top the sweat dripped down her back as she slammed the axe down the middle of one wood piece after another. Her muscles burned from the exertion. She’d never been much for exercise, but she did yoga a few days a week when her schedule allowed, but that was the extent of her training. She knew that in a few hours she’d feel the ache in her arms, but now she was happy to have something to take all that pent up emotion out on. 

At first, she didn’t notice him as he leaned back against the wall of the house, quietly watching her methodologically going through the pile of wood at a speed that was impossible to keep up with for a long time. For the first time since getting there, he actually believed what she had said. That she wasn’t in bed with Rittenhouse, and that she really was regretful for what happened. 

Their conversation hadn’t gone much further before they both had attempted sleep on the cots. In the darkness, she had told him that she no longer wanted to be a pawn in anyone’s game anymore. Not for Rittenhouse, not for him, and not for Agent Christopher and Homeland Security. Now she was going to be doing this for her. He’d never considered that he’d played her as a pawn in a chess piece, though he had always been aware that he was using her. It was strange to have admitted one to himself, i.e that he’d used her, but the other logical conclusion that he was playing her, never really crossed his mind. Her being Rittenhouse had justified it for him, and he never thought she would get hurt. Maybe erased from history, but not hurt. That was something he was willing to do to her to save his family. In the beginning, it was without any remorse, but the closer he came the harder it became to accept that he’d erase yet another person from history. Like she had never been at all. 

As she had drifted off to sleep he had remained awake thinking about that sentence. That he had been placed equal to Rittenhouse in how people had taken advantage of her. All she wanted to do was good but the people around her twisted every action into their own favor. Of course, she would flee from it all when it all came clear. Why she chose to still trust him he had no idea, but he had to feel some gratitude towards it. A part of him felt relieved that he’d chosen the right person to put his trust him even when he actually didn’t know her beyond the words one version of her wrote. 

“Want some help?” he asked. He never got used to how heavy English words were on his tongue. His tongue wasn’t used to how guttural the language was, and couldn’t twist the itself to make him sound more native. Everywhere he went his foreign background was worn like a bright neon sign on his forehead. Foreigner, it screamed. It required him to turn up his charm wherever he went, manipulate himself into the cornerstones of American history, even those not recognized by history as such.

“I’m fine,” she said through gritted teeth, swinging the ax down on a piece of wood that split right down the middle.

“Coffee?” She twisted her upper body around to face him then, placing the ax over her shoulder with a contemplative expression on her face. He held out a coffee mug as a peace offering towards her.

They sat down on the dock side by side but keeping a distance between them that was bigger than necessary. Despite the water still being freezing, she peeled off her shoes and socks to carefully dip her toes in it. They probably wouldn’t stay here for long, but she wished that they would so that she could take one last swim in this lake before it was all over. Before this was a place she couldn’t return to. Maybe one day it would all be back to normal, this time in their lives erased from the memories of all but them. That day was not promised, there was no way to make sure of it.

She had never yearned to swim more than she had that morning. 

The sun was hot on their faces, but the breeze was still brisk enough to remind them that winter had barely left, and at a moment’s notice the weather could turn cold again. It didn’t snow here, they weren’t that far up in the mountains, but it got chilly enough. 

“So your job is to convince me,” he said keeping his eyes out across the lake. He looked nearly serene sitting there. It was an odd place for her to see him in, looking domestic in his jeans and t-shirt and slowly drinking his morning coffee. Not at all like the lethal man in period costumes raging his way through history wreaking havoc in his path. 

“Convince you of what?” It probably didn’t earn her any points, but she wanted to see how much he’d figured out. Probably all of it. 

“To fight for, no wait, with you against Rittenhouse.” He looked over at her but didn’t turn his head. “Wyatt and Rufus gave me a quick run-down on what has happened since I was locked up.” 

“Of course they did,” she mumbled into her mug before taking a sip, considering how to answer him. 

“... and that Emma is Rittenhouse.” He said that bashfully, a tint of rose across the top of his cheeks that would’ve been cute had it not been for the fiery rage in his eyes.

“I’m the only one of us you listen to, so of course it would be me.” She placed the cup down on the ground, turning herself so that she was sitting facing him. “You’ve shot Rufus, and Wyatt wants to shoot you.”

He smiled wryly. “That’s supposed to convince me?” 

“Honesty works best, doesn’t it? I have nothing to hide from you.” He already knew her secrets, they had already been laid out in front of her by everyone around her. Nothing was just hers to know anymore. 

“How?” He’d asked her this question before. It had been about a week since the 1950s when he’d come to see her, to say goodbye to her. How, if not his way. 

“You were right.” He narrowed his eyes. “We don’t know exactly how we’re going to do it, but we’re not going to put a sledgehammer to history and hope it works out that way. We’re going to follow Emma, and fight whatever she and Rittenhouse are trying to do to history before it is too late.”

“Sounds a lot like what you were doing with me before.” 

She shrugged. “Yeah, it does, and it sucks I know that. We just don’t have the luxury to make the choice of where to go because we cannot leave Rittenhouse with a time machine and do nothing.”

“Why do you need me, you have Rufus and Wyatt don’t you?” She remained silent for a while, trying to figure out the best way to tell him, to convince him that they needed him. 

“It’s probably not going to be over anytime soon, it’s going to take years to fight them, and we’re going to need a bigger team that doesn’t tire out.” She twisted the coffee cup against the wooden dock they were sitting on. “We take shifts... when some of us sleep, or after one of us gets hurt, the other one can take over. That way we’re not as vulnerable.”

“You need backup?”

“We need a team of us, fighting all of this together.”

He didn’t respond to her, simply turned his gaze back over the water, looking towards an horizon that was hidden by the thick forest on the other side of the lake. 

With the sweat drying on her skin she looked over at him one last time before standing up, peeling off her top and jeans and jumping into the freezing water. Down underneath the surface, everything was silent. All she could hear was the drumming beat of her heart in her ears. When she opened her eyes she couldn’t see further than her hands and feet that were treading water but keeping her submerged. 

When she was a kid she was a swimmer. She’d spend so much time in water that her mother feared she’d grow gills. At thirteen when the competitions started to get more serious she had wanted to continue on, but her mother had feared that it would have a negative impact on her grades. Like she always did she’d listened to her mom and quit swimming, put away the trophies, and focused on school. 

Another point in her life where she’d been steered in this one direction that she would have never dreamed for herself without careful guidance and manipulation. 

The water of the lake her car had slid off into was darker than this, but not much different. It had been colder, chilling her to the bone so fast that she forgot how to move her limbs. This water was cold, but there was a fire in her veins that kept her warm. That was new, she hadn’t noticed it before now. 

She opened her mouth and screamed. 

The bubbles were furious around her face, and soon there was no air left in her lungs to scream with. It was as she decided to resurface that she felt rather than saw another body plunge into the water, hard hands grabbing her and pulling her up.

“What are you doing!?” she screamed at him, pulling her hair away from her face and clutching the dock tightly.

“Jesus fuck Lucy, you scared me!” he yelled back, then heaved himself up on the dock again before grabbing her under her armpits and pulling her up, almost throwing her down on the ground. “It’s freezing!” He was soaked through his clothes, shoulders up by his ears and shivering already. Despite wearing less than him, just a bra and underwear, she couldn’t feel the cold. Not yet anyway. 

“I’m fine.” She grabbed her clothes and stalked barefoot up towards the house again.

\---

It was easy to pretend that the outside world didn’t exist in that small room at the back of the house. Huddled under blankets and watching the fire she couldn’t hear anything but the crackling flames and the steady breathing coming from him. The world could be ending and they would not know, and there was a strange sort of comfort in that. Ignorance was after all bliss, and she was longing back to ignorance.

Neither of them had spoken a word in the hours following the incident down at the lake. She had heated up some ravioli in a can and given him a bowl as a peace offering some time ago, but beyond the tight smile there had been no communication between them. It had been a stupid and impulsive decision to jump into the lake, but after a lifetime of following rules, she didn’t want to curb her desires anymore. She wanted to do what she wanted and needed to do. 

When she looked over at him, wearing a t-shirt and joggers while his jeans were drying in front of the fire, she first noticed his hair. It had always been combed neatly, parted down the middle or whatever was the fashion for the decade they were in. Now it was standing up in all directions, falling flat in other places. It looked so normal that it was weird. 

She pushed the blankets off of her body, walking slowly towards him so that he would notice her approaching before she came too close. That way he could reject her, tell her to leave if he wanted to be left alone. Instead, he watched her curiously as she bent over his body and pressed her lips to his. Soft, gentle, barely any pressure at all. His eyes fluttered shut, and his hand rested on her cheek. 

When she pulled away from him, just a few inches but still close enough to feel his breath fan over her face, he blinked his eyes open to meet hers. With deft fingers she pulled at the strings of his pants, keeping her eyes locked on his. 

“Wha-” He began asking as she pulled at his pants, yanking them down past his hips bringing his underwear down as well. She didn’t reply, just sat down on her knees in front of him, taking him in her hand. Already he had started to respond to her touch, probably starved of this kind of affection. 

She slowly pumped his length in her hand, watching him. Watching to see if there was anything telling her to stop, and she would move away, apologize, and hide under her blankets. His eyes fell shut, and he let out a long exhale as if in relief. 

When she took him into her mouth she could taste the salty precum on her tongue. His hand fisted in her hair but he did not guide her, allowing her to set the pace and give him what he needed. What she wanted was to take care of him. To care for and comfort this man who had lost it all, been through worse than she had with her own family. If this is how she felt she couldn’t imagine the loneliness and heartache he was drowning in. 

She flattened her tongue against the ridge at the back of the head, then took him into her mouth completely. Slowly working up and down his length, keeping an even pressure on the upward stroke. She glanced up at him. His head was thrown back, leaning against the wall with his mouth open and eyes closed in concentration. Just then, as if he knew she was looking, he looked down at her with eyes darker than she ever thought they could be. 

He let out a soft “ah” over and over again as she bobbed her head slowly up and down in his lap, cupping his balls softly, paying close attention to that small ridge that would make him hiss every time she flicked her tongue against it. 

It was only a few minutes until he spilled into her mouth. Hot and salty, and again and again as she swallowed it down. 

She rocked back on her heels, watching his breathing calm and his eyes open to look at her. 

“What was that for?” he asked, slowly pulling his pants up and concealing himself again. She took a sip of the water that stood next to his bed.

“I just… don’t want to be controlled anymore.” She flattened her hand on his knee, watching it spread out up over his thigh, and then she clenched it again. “And I wanted to give you something good, in all this bad I think we all deserve good things.” 

She stood back up, picking up a flashlight from the table that stood against the wall.

“I’m heading out for a second.”

The moment the outside air hit her face so did the tears. They fell without sound, flowing down her cheeks as if floodgates had opened and there was no stopping them. She leaned against the railing, hiding her face in her hands as she did her best to try to rid herself of the memories. They crashed against her wherever she turned here. Even though it had been years it still smelled like she remembered, and without any effort, she could recall even the most minute of details. 

Each decision she took away from Rittenhouse was a decision where she freed herself from their reigns. It was also a decision that took her from her sister, and the life she should have had with her father. She could live her life as she wanted it now, and by doing that leaving whatever life she should have had with her sister, or she could fall into Rittenhouse arms and betray her sister like that. Either way, there was no way to go forward by living in the past. 

Her sister was gone, and now she had to learn to live with that.

\---

“Okay, you need a team,” Flynn said as they reached the top of the hill. They’d set off early morning into the woods, intending to have lunch up on this hill. The lunch wasn’t anything to brag about, but the view was spectacular. From up there they could see the lake in its entirety, and see the winding road that led from the house and into the world again. 

“Yeah,” she wiped some sweat off of her brow and stopped for a moment to catch her breath before pulling the backpack off of her back. The limp he had the first night was gone, probably just a sprained muscle that had bothered him. “It would be five of us. You, me, Jiya, Rufus, and Wyatt.” 

“You wouldn’t have someone to switch off with?” He raised his eyebrows at that, unzipping his bag to hand her a water bottle. 

“Well, we haven’t had much luck with outsiders so far have we?” She accepted the bottle but didn’t drink from it. “It’s also probably safest, for me, that I go back.” She avoided his gaze as she sat down on the rock, keeping her eyes fixated on the view, on the long road that could take them back to civilization. 

“Because you could be erased,” he finished for her, and she nodded without taking her eyes off of wherever it was fixated on out there. It was one of those gazes, Garcia noted, that was looking but not seeing. 

“I might disappear even if I go into the past too, just cease to exist just like that…” She glanced down in her lap. “Objects don’t disappear, inanimate things, numbers and all that just stays the same, but no one has ever been erased from history while traveling into the past.” 

“Staying is a bigger risk,” he added. “I get it.” 

“You know,” she smiled at him, almost with humor. “About a week ago you were prepared to risk my existence.”

“You know why,” he said, shifting. “It was about Rittenhouse, taking them out and finally getting my girls back.” He paused for a few long beats. “You know how important it is for us to get them, to end them once and for all.”

“But not suddenly it’s not important to you anymore?” She watched him closely, but he kept all emotion off of his face, not revealing his thoughts to her at all. 

“It’s still important.” His voice was gruff. There were many things left unsaid between them, a vast canyon of things that had to be said but just weren’t. She understood that there was more to t, but what exactly was stopping him she couldn’t figure out. Revenge was still out there, his family could still return. “You’ve been doing this for a few months, I’ve been doing this for three years. It doesn’t get easier, it doesn’t change anything at all. They’re still out there, even after this massive blow they’re as strong as ever.” 

It was true. They both knew it. That she was there was proof enough of it. If Rittenhouse was gone she wouldn’t have had to flee.

“We have to go back to the beginning, to David Rittenhouse.” She knew now why he went there, why he wanted to go after John. She could never regret saving John Rittenhouse, but she understood why he thought that it was the right thing to do. Had John been a little older she might’ve let it slide, but a young boy… she couldn’t let him. 

“I already killed him, Lucy.” She dug through her bag and handed him one of the sandwiches. It was as if they were discussing something trivial, not murder. 

“You killed him when he was older, what happens when we go back and kill him when he’s eighteen, twenty? Before he’s got any kind of political power. What about his parents?” He unwrapped his sandwich as she spoke, listening to her intently. 

“I can’t get my hopes up again, Lucy.” 

\---

When they returned to the house that evening he lit the fire as she changed out of the stiff jeans into a pair of joggers, preparing for another night on the uncomfortable cot. The day had been the warmest day of the year so far, and despite the cool shadows that the trees offered it had still been clammy. She suspected that she had burnt the tip of her nose as well, but she didn’t mind too much. 

She could hear the fire starting to come to life as she unpacked their bags, pulling one of her uneaten sandwiches out of the plastic and took a bite. It had been a long day, with long exhausting talks that led nowhere. Eventually, they had settled on a neutral topic, talking about their lives before Rittenhouse like there had ever been a time where they never existed. They skirted around the topic of the people they’d lost, instead choosing to talk about what Rittenhouse hadn’t been able to touch yet.

Now she didn’t feel like eating another canned meal, didn’t feel like eating more sandwiches. What she wanted was a pizza, or sushi, or chow mein, or anything that she could get delivered to her house in Oakland. She looked over at Flynn who was copying her and changing into more comfortable pants, and wondered if he could hunt. It was just for a second before she shoved the thought out, along with how the thought of him doing something so ridiculously macho got her too hot and bothered. It was ridiculous, it definitely was. 

She turned her back on him immediately as the hot rush of blood hit her face. Last night had been hot, too. There were a lot of things about Garcia Flynn that was hot. This room seemed to push all of that to the forefront of her mind, and everything else back. As night fell it became more obvious how isolated they were to the rest of the world. 

His chest was touching hers before she even heard him approach, hands steady on her hips without any waiver in confidence. 

“I felt that I should return the favor.” His kiss was wet on her neck, fingers untying the strap she had just done up, his hand in her pants before she could do anything more than moan. His fingers brushed over her folds, slowly teasing her, and she could do nothing but breathe in anticipation of what was going to happen, melting into his chest, grabbing a hold of the arm that held her close to him. “Let me give you something good,” he whispered into her ear, echoing the words she had said the night before. 

He turned her around, lifting her up on the table that she had dined at with her whole family and pulling at her pants. She wiggled out of them, a shiver going up her spine as her naked bum was sat on the table. He carefully pulled her legs out of the pants, but then threw them over his shoulder. Then he sat there on his knees in front of her, his thumbs lazily rubbing circles on the inside of her thighs as she watched him with heady anticipation. 

Just as she had been slow the night before, he was too. His lips kissing the top of her pelvic bone that was rough with hair. Once she was particular with trimming, and looking good for no one but herself. With all the time travel and all this chaos, she hadn’t had access to a razor in a while. Neither had he, and his beard scratched the inside of her thigh as he kissed himself lower, parting her folds with his tongue.

“Oh,” she sighed, one hand grabbing the edge of the table as the other grabbed a hold of his shoulder as he pulled her closer towards him, barely keeping her on the table. He devoured her completely, buried himself between her thighs, and sucked and licked, flicked his tongue to elicit that particular high-pitched moan from her throat. He teased her, pulling her towards the edge fast and hard.

When she came, shuddering and sobbing, he brought her down slow. Dragging her orgasm out as long as he could before settling her carefully back on the table again so she wasn’t dangling off of it. 

As he stood from his knees about to turn away from her she grabbed a hold of his hand, stopping him. 

“Flynn,” she barely had breath in her lungs to speak, but she stood up on shaky legs. “Please.”

His lips were still wet and tasting of her, and she practically leaped up at him, her arms around his neck not allowing a breath of space between them. With more force than he thought she had in her she pushed him down in the chair that had been left in the house to gather dust, and she sat down on top of him, legs on either side of his hips. 

This chair had been big enough for both Lucy, Amy, and their cousin to sit in all together during the big family dinners they had at the end of summer. Her uncle and his family would drive down from Oregon, and they would say that they’d only stay for a weekend, but always end up staying a week. Now, this chair was big enough to fit a full grown man with her on top of him unzipping his pants and pulling him out, sinking down onto him with slow purpose.

“Yes.” She nodded, keeping the pace slow and steady, her hands placed firmly on his chest above his frantically beating heart. His hands on her hips guided her slow movements, and first, they just watched each other. Watched the heaving chests, lips that parted to try to catch some breath, eyes that fluttered close when she sank down low and ground her hips against his. 

Then he took a hold of her neck, pulling her down towards him, bruising her lips with the force of the kiss.

Even when they were both spent, she lying lazily against his chest on the lap, neither of them moved or spoke for a long time. His steady beating heart, and her warmth like a hug he hadn’t known he missed so much, kept them both from detangling until their limbs started to go numb and start aching. 

\---

Wyatt radioed them that morning over the comm that he and Rufus were returning. They had the lifeboat and all that was needed to jump back in time to stop Rittenhouse. Their ETA was an hour, so they needed to pack everything up and get ready to leave.

In a comfortable silence the two of them stuffed their bags with the little belongings they had with them, bringing it to the porch before turning back to get something else. Food, the cots, everything they needed for the three days they were there. 

Funny how time was warped even for adults. It felt like it had been longer than three days like months had passed in the blink of an eye. At the same time, it felt like she had been awoken from a short nap, abruptly shaken awake in the middle of a dream. Knowing that the dream was probably not more than a few seconds long, but feeling like it had taken place across the span of months or hours. 

The place even looked different when she knew Wyatt and Rufus were returning. It was no longer a sanctuary where they were isolated from the rest of the world.

When everything was packed they stood on the front porch and watched the driveway, listening for the sound of an approaching car. 

“Have you decided yet what you’re going to do?” she asked him, trying to keep her tone casual but the small glimmer of hope still shone through.

“No, not yet.” For all that it was worth, she at least appreciated his honesty. 

“I’m not asking you to open up the same can of worms again, or go through defeat after defeat trying to get your family back.” This was not the time to get frustrated, she thought, taking two deep breaths before continuing. “We both have to stop living in the past, every one of us has to look at the future, at the present as it is, and do our damned best to protect it from people who wants it no good.” 

“I’m supposed to go from terrorist to hero?” His signature smug smile graced his face, and she rolled her eyes at him like she usually did. 

“I’m asking you to… not give up on what’s right.” She pleaded with him. “This is going to sound really selfish, and I’m sorry but… If you’re not doing it for them, then do it for me. Until Rittenhouse is gone I can’t be free. I want to be free and live my life like I’m supposed to.”

She waited a few beats before continuing. “You can still do good in this world Garcia.”

As she watched him silently think it over they heard the sound of the car in the distance growing closer. This was his one chance to join them, to continue the fight he started a long time ago. The car was now close enough to hear that splatter of gravel as it hit the car driving over it. 

He had to make a choice.

This was it.


End file.
